But later in the 21st century, transnational petroleum interests simply decided to change the leadership of any government that attempted to pass radical legislation that might reduce pollution and dependence on petroleum.
In the context of what democracy ought to mean, you are of course correct.
In the context of who now really operates the levers using historically unprecedented stockpiles of cash, I think the notion of blaming the voter is a quaint allusion to a bygone era (of democracy).
I ported software for testing them under various temperatures for use in down-hole horizontal drilling equipment in the late 80s. When looking up my old company when writing this post, I ran across the following list of hundreds of companies getting permission to transport them (hazardous back then too!) in 1991 from the DOT, and a 1973 technical report from the US Army on appropriate lithium ion battery testing procedures, which seems earlier than much of the research discussed in this article: https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/hazmat/documents/offer/SP7052.pdf/...
Related research from 1993: https://colab.ws/articles/10.1016%2F0378-7753%2893%2980023-i
Exxon responded to the 1970s by recognizing that data was going to be a huge part of the world going forward. I'm guessing their early experiences with what was "big data" at the time to do oil field exploration clued them into what was about to happen.
Then the 1980s happened with massive shifts in geopolitical borders and in the energy sector in particular so both companies got cold feet on these long shots that previously seemed existential to their futures. This isn't a particularly surprising story.
Schlumberger was another one, tried their luck with Fairchild.
So how much did it fall per MWh?